SummaryAFRIGOS investigates the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy, on the other. This is reflected in unprecedented levels of investment in physical and communications infrastructure, and the outsourcing of key functions of Customs, Immigration and security agencies. AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. These represent sites of remarkable dynamism and cosmopolitanism, which reflects their role in connecting African urban centres to each other and to other global cities.
AFRIGOS considers how governance 'assemblages' are forged at different scales and is explicitly comparative. It works through 5 connected Streams that address specific questions: 1. AGENDA-SETTING is concerned with policy (re-)formulation. 2. PERIPHERAL URBANISM examines governance in border towns and port cities. 3. BORDER WORKERS addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods from the border. 4. CONNECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE looks as the transformative effects of new technologies. 5. PEOPLE & GOODS IN MOTION traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected. AFRIGOS contributes to interdisciplinary research on borderland studies, multi-level governance and the everyday state.

AFRIGOS investigates the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy, on the other. This is reflected in unprecedented levels of investment in physical and communications infrastructure, and the outsourcing of key functions of Customs, Immigration and security agencies. AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. These represent sites of remarkable dynamism and cosmopolitanism, which reflects their role in connecting African urban centres to each other and to other global cities.
AFRIGOS considers how governance 'assemblages' are forged at different scales and is explicitly comparative. It works through 5 connected Streams that address specific questions: 1. AGENDA-SETTING is concerned with policy (re-)formulation. 2. PERIPHERAL URBANISM examines governance in border towns and port cities. 3. BORDER WORKERS addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods from the border. 4. CONNECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE looks as the transformative effects of new technologies. 5. PEOPLE & GOODS IN MOTION traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected. AFRIGOS contributes to interdisciplinary research on borderland studies, multi-level governance and the everyday state.

Max ERC Funding

2 491 364 €

Duration

Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31

Project acronymAISMA

ProjectAn anthropological investigation of muscular politics in South Asia

Researcher (PI)Lucia Michelutti

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2011-StG_20101124

SummaryOver the past decade, the media, international organisations, as well as policy-making bodies have voiced increasing concern about a growing overlap between the criminal and political spheres in South Asia. Many 'criminal politicians' are accused not simply of embezzlement, but of burglary, kidnapping and murder, so that the observed political landscape emerges not only as a 'corrupt', but also a highly violent sphere. This project is a collaborative and cross-national ethnographic study of the criminalisation of politics in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bringing together local-level investigation, surveys and historical analysis, the project will produce comprehensive political ethnographies in sixteen sites across the subcontinent, providing empirical material and theoretical directives for further charting of the virtually unexplored terrain of extra-legal muscular politics in the region. Central to the proposed programme of research are the following interrelated objectives: 1) To further develop the method of collaborative political ethnography by designing, collecting and producing case studies which will allow us to write thematically across sites; 2) To generate policy relevant research in the fields of security, conflict, democracy and development; 3) To produce capability by forging an international network of scholars on issues related to democratisation, violence, crime and support the work and careers of the project's 4 Post-docs. The study capitalises on previous research and skills of the PI in the cross-cultural study of democracy and muscular politics in the global South. All members of the research team have expertise in ethnographic research in the difficult spheres of criminal politics, informal economies, and political violence and are hence well and sometimes uniquely equipped to pursue this challenging research thematic.

Over the past decade, the media, international organisations, as well as policy-making bodies have voiced increasing concern about a growing overlap between the criminal and political spheres in South Asia. Many 'criminal politicians' are accused not simply of embezzlement, but of burglary, kidnapping and murder, so that the observed political landscape emerges not only as a 'corrupt', but also a highly violent sphere. This project is a collaborative and cross-national ethnographic study of the criminalisation of politics in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bringing together local-level investigation, surveys and historical analysis, the project will produce comprehensive political ethnographies in sixteen sites across the subcontinent, providing empirical material and theoretical directives for further charting of the virtually unexplored terrain of extra-legal muscular politics in the region. Central to the proposed programme of research are the following interrelated objectives: 1) To further develop the method of collaborative political ethnography by designing, collecting and producing case studies which will allow us to write thematically across sites; 2) To generate policy relevant research in the fields of security, conflict, democracy and development; 3) To produce capability by forging an international network of scholars on issues related to democratisation, violence, crime and support the work and careers of the project's 4 Post-docs. The study capitalises on previous research and skills of the PI in the cross-cultural study of democracy and muscular politics in the global South. All members of the research team have expertise in ethnographic research in the difficult spheres of criminal politics, informal economies, and political violence and are hence well and sometimes uniquely equipped to pursue this challenging research thematic.

Max ERC Funding

1 200 000 €

Duration

Start date: 2012-03-01, End date: 2016-02-29

Project acronymALREG

ProjectAnalysing Learning in Regulatory Governance

Researcher (PI)Claudio Radaelli

Host Institution (HI)THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2008-AdG

SummaryThis four-year interdisciplinary project addresses the question what has been learned through the use of better regulation ? Better regulation is a flagship policy on the Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs. Its aims are to provide new governance architectures for law-making, to increase the competitiveness of the regulatory environment, and to secure wide social legitimacy for multi-level systems of rules. Whilst most of the research has looked at how better regulation is changing, this project will produce findings on what has changed because of better regulation. Theoretically, the project will use (and significantly improve on) theories of policy learning. Empirically, it will cover Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the EU including multi-level analysis and analysis by sector of regulation. Methodologically, the project will draw on comparative analysis of types of learning, experiments with regulatory policy-makers in six countries and the European Commission, large-n analysis of impact assessments, backward-mapping of legislation (to appraise the role played by better regulation in the formulation or laws in the UK and the EU), meta-analysis of case-studies and co-production of knowledge with better regulation officers. Dissemination will target both stakeholders (i.e., policy officers, civil society organizations, and business federations) and academic conferences in political science, law, and risk analysis, with a major research monograph to be completed in year 4 and a final interdisciplinary conference.

This four-year interdisciplinary project addresses the question what has been learned through the use of better regulation ? Better regulation is a flagship policy on the Lisbon agenda for growth and jobs. Its aims are to provide new governance architectures for law-making, to increase the competitiveness of the regulatory environment, and to secure wide social legitimacy for multi-level systems of rules. Whilst most of the research has looked at how better regulation is changing, this project will produce findings on what has changed because of better regulation. Theoretically, the project will use (and significantly improve on) theories of policy learning. Empirically, it will cover Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK and the EU including multi-level analysis and analysis by sector of regulation. Methodologically, the project will draw on comparative analysis of types of learning, experiments with regulatory policy-makers in six countries and the European Commission, large-n analysis of impact assessments, backward-mapping of legislation (to appraise the role played by better regulation in the formulation or laws in the UK and the EU), meta-analysis of case-studies and co-production of knowledge with better regulation officers. Dissemination will target both stakeholders (i.e., policy officers, civil society organizations, and business federations) and academic conferences in political science, law, and risk analysis, with a major research monograph to be completed in year 4 and a final interdisciplinary conference.

SummaryThis project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.

This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.

Max ERC Funding

1 457 869 €

Duration

Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2020-07-31

Project acronymArctic Domus

ProjectArctic Domestication: Emplacing Human-Animal Relationships in the Circumpolar North

Researcher (PI)David George Anderson

Host Institution (HI)THE UNIVERSITY COURT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2011-ADG_20110406

SummaryThis 6-year project aims to co-ordinate field research in each of these fields to elaborate a new model of emplaced human-animal relations evoking recent theoretical concerns of the definition of the person, the attribution of agency, and renewed attention to ‘built environments’. The project will work inductively from empirical observations in seven field sites across the circumpolar Arctic from the Russian Federation, to Fennoscandia, to Canada. The circumpolar Arctic originally provided many of the primary thought experiments for classic models of cultural evolution. It has now again become the focus of powerful debates over the balance between the protection of cultural heritage and the development of natural resources to fuel a future for industrial economies. The human-non-human relationships chosen for study cover the full range of theoretical and political discourse within the sciences today from primary encounters in domination to contemporary bio-technical innovations in farming. The team will transcend typical ‘existential’ models of domination between people and animals by describing complex social settings where more than one species interact with the cultural landscape. The team will also challenge existing definitions between wild and tame by instead examining what links these behaviour types together. Further, the team members will examine how domestication was never a sudden, fleeting intuition but rather a process wherein people and domesticates are sometimes closer and sometimes farther from each other. Finally, the research team, working within the above mentioned literatures, will develop a renewed model – a new way of describing – these relationships which does not necessarily rely upon metaphors of domination, competition, individual struggle, origins, or hybridity. The strength of the team, and the principle investigator, is their demonstrated ability to carry out fieldwork in this often difficult to access region.

This 6-year project aims to co-ordinate field research in each of these fields to elaborate a new model of emplaced human-animal relations evoking recent theoretical concerns of the definition of the person, the attribution of agency, and renewed attention to ‘built environments’. The project will work inductively from empirical observations in seven field sites across the circumpolar Arctic from the Russian Federation, to Fennoscandia, to Canada. The circumpolar Arctic originally provided many of the primary thought experiments for classic models of cultural evolution. It has now again become the focus of powerful debates over the balance between the protection of cultural heritage and the development of natural resources to fuel a future for industrial economies. The human-non-human relationships chosen for study cover the full range of theoretical and political discourse within the sciences today from primary encounters in domination to contemporary bio-technical innovations in farming. The team will transcend typical ‘existential’ models of domination between people and animals by describing complex social settings where more than one species interact with the cultural landscape. The team will also challenge existing definitions between wild and tame by instead examining what links these behaviour types together. Further, the team members will examine how domestication was never a sudden, fleeting intuition but rather a process wherein people and domesticates are sometimes closer and sometimes farther from each other. Finally, the research team, working within the above mentioned literatures, will develop a renewed model – a new way of describing – these relationships which does not necessarily rely upon metaphors of domination, competition, individual struggle, origins, or hybridity. The strength of the team, and the principle investigator, is their demonstrated ability to carry out fieldwork in this often difficult to access region.

Max ERC Funding

2 497 830 €

Duration

Start date: 2012-07-01, End date: 2018-06-30

Project acronymARTEFACT

ProjectThe Global as Artefact: Understanding the Patterns of Global Political History Through an Anthropology of Knowledge -- The Case of Agriculture in Four Global Systems from the Neolithic to the Present

Researcher (PI)INANNA HAMATI-ATAYA

Host Institution (HI)THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2016-COG

SummaryKnowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now.
ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges.
ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions.
ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.

Knowledge is an anthropological constant that is indissociable from the birth and interactions of human societies, but is at best a secondary concern for scholars of international relations and globalization. Contemporary global studies are thus unable to account for the co-constitution of knowledge and politics at a macro-scale, and remain especially blind to the historical patterns of epistemic development that operate at the level of the species as a whole and have shaped its global political history in specific, path-dependent ways up to now.
ARTEFACT is the first project to pursue a knowledge-centered investigation of global politics. It is uniquely grounded in an anthropological approach that treats globalization and human knowledges beyond their modern manifestations, from the longue-durée perspective of our species’ social history. 'The global as artefact' is more than a metaphor. It reflects the premise that human collectives 'make' the political world not merely through ideas, language, or norms, but primordially through the material infrastructures, solutions, objects, practices, and skills they develop in response to evolving structural challenges.
ARTEFACT takes agriculture as an exemplary and especially timely case-study to illuminate the entangled global histories of knowledge and politics, analyzing and comparing four increasingly inclusive 'global political systems' of the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary eras and their associated agrarian socio-epistemic revolutions.
ARTEFACT ultimately aims to 1) develop an original theory of the global, 2) launch Global Knowledge Studies as a new cross-disciplinary domain of systematic empirical and theoretical study, and 3) push the respective boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge, global history, and international theory beyond the state-of-the-art and toward a holistic understanding that can illuminate how past trends of socio-epistemic evolution might shape future paths of global life.

Max ERC Funding

1 428 165 €

Duration

Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

Project acronymASA

ProjectUnderstanding Statehood through Architecture: a comparative study of Africa's state buildings

Researcher (PI)Julia Catherine GALLAGHER

Host Institution (HI)SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryThe project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.

The project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.

Max ERC Funding

1 870 665 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymBANK-LASH

ProjectBanks, Popular Backlash, and the Post-Crisis Politics of Financial Regulation

Researcher (PI)Pepper CULPEPPER

Host Institution (HI)THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryDriven by public outrage at bank bailouts during the financial crisis, many governments have since then tried to rewrite the rules governing finance. Yet the anger provoked by the bailouts has not subsided. In Europe and in North America, citizen fury against bankers continues to structure battles over financial regulation. It also affects broader perceptions of fairness in the political system and feeds anti-elite populism. Scholars of political economy have chronicled the clashes between states and large banks, and scholars of political behaviour have noted the failings of governments to respond to the will of democratic majorities. No one has explored the feedback loops between policies regulating banks, the public anger towards banking elites, and media discussions of finance. BANK-LASH fills this gap, using a cutting-edge, high-risk research design comprising three work packages to link policy outcomes with public opinion and media coverage. BANK-LASH 1will collect the first cross-nationally comparable data on public attitudes towards finance, including a series of innovative survey experiments that assess how different media frames affect emotions and preferences. BANK-LASH 2 will use supervised machine learning to measure the overall media environment of these countries for the last decade, assessing how much different national media systems discuss finance and how different national media systems frame the discussion of banking regulation. BANK-LASH 3 links the micro-level study of attitudes and macro-level media coverage with episodes of policy intervention in each country in order to determine when democracies have imposed significant new regulation on their banks. By harnessing these different intellectual tools within a single study, BANK-LASH brings together the concerns of political economy, behavioral research and policy studies to untangle the relationship between banks, public policy, and anti-elite sentiment in the wake of the financial crisis.

Driven by public outrage at bank bailouts during the financial crisis, many governments have since then tried to rewrite the rules governing finance. Yet the anger provoked by the bailouts has not subsided. In Europe and in North America, citizen fury against bankers continues to structure battles over financial regulation. It also affects broader perceptions of fairness in the political system and feeds anti-elite populism. Scholars of political economy have chronicled the clashes between states and large banks, and scholars of political behaviour have noted the failings of governments to respond to the will of democratic majorities. No one has explored the feedback loops between policies regulating banks, the public anger towards banking elites, and media discussions of finance. BANK-LASH fills this gap, using a cutting-edge, high-risk research design comprising three work packages to link policy outcomes with public opinion and media coverage. BANK-LASH 1will collect the first cross-nationally comparable data on public attitudes towards finance, including a series of innovative survey experiments that assess how different media frames affect emotions and preferences. BANK-LASH 2 will use supervised machine learning to measure the overall media environment of these countries for the last decade, assessing how much different national media systems discuss finance and how different national media systems frame the discussion of banking regulation. BANK-LASH 3 links the micro-level study of attitudes and macro-level media coverage with episodes of policy intervention in each country in order to determine when democracies have imposed significant new regulation on their banks. By harnessing these different intellectual tools within a single study, BANK-LASH brings together the concerns of political economy, behavioral research and policy studies to untangle the relationship between banks, public policy, and anti-elite sentiment in the wake of the financial crisis.

Max ERC Funding

2 454 198 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymBAYNET

ProjectBayesian Networks and Non-Rational Expectations

Researcher (PI)Ran SPIEGLER

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2015-AdG

Summary"This project will develop a new framework for modeling economic agents having ""boundedly rational expectations"" (BRE). It is based on the concept of Bayesian networks (more generally, graphical models), borrowed from statistics and AI. In the framework's basic version, an agent is characterized by a directed acyclic graph (DAG) over the set of all relevant random variables. The DAG is the agent's ""type"" – it represents how he systematically distorts any objective probability distribution into a subjective belief. Technically, the distortion takes the form of the standard Bayesian-network factorization formula given by the agent's DAG. The agent's choice is modeled as a ""personal equilibrium"", because his subjective belief regarding the implications of his actions can vary with his own long-run behavior. The DAG representation unifies and simplifies existing models of BRE, subsuming them as special cases corresponding to distinct graphical representations. It captures hitherto-unmodeled fallacies such as reverse causation. The framework facilitates behavioral characterizations of general classes of models of BRE and expands their applicability. I will demonstrate this with applications to monetary policy, behavioral I.O., asset pricing, etc. I will extend the basic formalism to multi-agent environments, addressing issues beyond the reach of current models of BRE (e.g., formalizing the notion of ""high-order"" limited understanding of statistical regularities). Finally, I will seek a learning foundation for the graphical representation of BRE, in the sense that it will capture how the agent extrapolates his belief from a dataset (drawn from the objective distribution) containing ""missing values"", via some intuitive ""imputation method"". This part, too, borrows ideas from statistics and AI, further demonstrating the project's interdisciplinary nature."

"This project will develop a new framework for modeling economic agents having ""boundedly rational expectations"" (BRE). It is based on the concept of Bayesian networks (more generally, graphical models), borrowed from statistics and AI. In the framework's basic version, an agent is characterized by a directed acyclic graph (DAG) over the set of all relevant random variables. The DAG is the agent's ""type"" – it represents how he systematically distorts any objective probability distribution into a subjective belief. Technically, the distortion takes the form of the standard Bayesian-network factorization formula given by the agent's DAG. The agent's choice is modeled as a ""personal equilibrium"", because his subjective belief regarding the implications of his actions can vary with his own long-run behavior. The DAG representation unifies and simplifies existing models of BRE, subsuming them as special cases corresponding to distinct graphical representations. It captures hitherto-unmodeled fallacies such as reverse causation. The framework facilitates behavioral characterizations of general classes of models of BRE and expands their applicability. I will demonstrate this with applications to monetary policy, behavioral I.O., asset pricing, etc. I will extend the basic formalism to multi-agent environments, addressing issues beyond the reach of current models of BRE (e.g., formalizing the notion of ""high-order"" limited understanding of statistical regularities). Finally, I will seek a learning foundation for the graphical representation of BRE, in the sense that it will capture how the agent extrapolates his belief from a dataset (drawn from the objective distribution) containing ""missing values"", via some intuitive ""imputation method"". This part, too, borrows ideas from statistics and AI, further demonstrating the project's interdisciplinary nature."

Max ERC Funding

1 379 288 €

Duration

Start date: 2016-07-01, End date: 2021-06-30

Project acronymBBSG

ProjectBosnian Bones, Spanish Ghosts: 'Transitional Justice' and the Legal Shaping of Memory after Two Modern Conflicts

Researcher (PI)Sarah Lynn Wastell (Born Haller)

Host Institution (HI)GOLDSMITHS' COLLEGE

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2009-StG

SummaryThe proposed research entails an ethnographic study of two contemporary cases of post-conflict reconciliation: one, the Bosnian case, where international intervention ended conflict in a stalemate and went on to instigate a decade-long process of transition; and the other, the Spanish case, where a nationally-contrived pact of silence introduced an overnight transition after Franco's death a pact now being broken nearly seventy years after the country's civil war concluded. Both societies witnessed massive violations of international humanitarian law. Both societies are presently exhuming, identifying and re-burying their dead. But their trajectories of transitional justice could not have been more different. This project will investigate how Law shapes cultural memories of wartime atrocity in these contrasting scenarios. How do criminal prosecutions, constitutional reforms, and international rights mechanisms, provide or obfuscate the scales into which histories of violent conflict are framed? Does the systematic re-structuring of legislative and judicial infrastructure stifle recognition of past abuses or does it create the conditions through which such pasts can be confronted? How does Law shape or inflect the cultural politics of memory and memorialisation? And most importantly, how should legal activity be weighted, prioritised and sequenced with other, extra-legal components of peace-building initiatives? The ultimate goal of this project will be to mobilise the findings from the two field-sites to suggest a more nuanced assessment of Law s place in transitional justice. Arguing that disparate historical, cultural and legal contexts require equally distinct approaches towards social healing, the research aims to produce a Post-Conflict Action Framework an architecture of questions and concerns, which, once answered, would point towards context-specific designs for transitional justice programmes in the future.

The proposed research entails an ethnographic study of two contemporary cases of post-conflict reconciliation: one, the Bosnian case, where international intervention ended conflict in a stalemate and went on to instigate a decade-long process of transition; and the other, the Spanish case, where a nationally-contrived pact of silence introduced an overnight transition after Franco's death a pact now being broken nearly seventy years after the country's civil war concluded. Both societies witnessed massive violations of international humanitarian law. Both societies are presently exhuming, identifying and re-burying their dead. But their trajectories of transitional justice could not have been more different. This project will investigate how Law shapes cultural memories of wartime atrocity in these contrasting scenarios. How do criminal prosecutions, constitutional reforms, and international rights mechanisms, provide or obfuscate the scales into which histories of violent conflict are framed? Does the systematic re-structuring of legislative and judicial infrastructure stifle recognition of past abuses or does it create the conditions through which such pasts can be confronted? How does Law shape or inflect the cultural politics of memory and memorialisation? And most importantly, how should legal activity be weighted, prioritised and sequenced with other, extra-legal components of peace-building initiatives? The ultimate goal of this project will be to mobilise the findings from the two field-sites to suggest a more nuanced assessment of Law s place in transitional justice. Arguing that disparate historical, cultural and legal contexts require equally distinct approaches towards social healing, the research aims to produce a Post-Conflict Action Framework an architecture of questions and concerns, which, once answered, would point towards context-specific designs for transitional justice programmes in the future.